Back before, municipal and state governments, pension funds, etc. mostly invested in financials of the manufacturing sort. Then, America was in the manufacturing business. An issuing manufacturer was contractually bound to hand over the return owed. The investors were entitled. If they didn’t get their entitle, it was, ‘”see you in court.” In 2023, in […]

Weekly Indicators for April 10 -14 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My ‘Weekly Indicators’ post is up at Seeking Alpha. The slow drip-drip-drip of deceleration generally continues. Perhaps most significantly, YoY consumer spending as measured by Redbook sank to a new post-pandemic lockdown low of only +1.5%. But other coincident indicators in particular, […]

Real manufacturing and trade sales probably rose to a new record high in February; may have declined in March  – by New Deal democrat Real manufacturing and trade sales is one of the 4 monthly coincident indicators most monitored by the NBER to determine whether the economy is in expansion or recession. Because the reporting of […]

Positive revisions make for a good March industrial production report  – by New Deal democrat If retail sales for March were bad, industrial production (blue in the graph below) was at very least mixed to the upside. Total production increased +0.4%, and on top of that February was revised higher by +0.2%, and January was […]

March real retail sales lay an egg, suggests downturn in nonfarm payrolls by the end of summer  – by New Deal democrat  After a quiet early part of the week, today we get a deluge of data: retail sales and industrial production for March, and total business sales for February. Because real total business sales […]

Initial claims continue to warrant yellow caution flag  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims last week rose 11,000 to 239,000. The more important 4 week average rose 2,250 to 240,000. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, decreased 13,000 to 1,823,000: At this juncture the YoY change is more important, because increases of […]

AAR: March Rail Carloads and Intermodal Decreased Year-over-year by Calculated Risk on 4/07/2023 03:25:00 PM From the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Rail Time Indicators. Graphs and excerpts reprinted with permission by AAR to Bill McBride. Click on graph for larger image. This graph from the Rail Time Indicators report shows the six-week average of U.S. Carloads in 2021, 2022 and […]

I split these topics out from my other groupings of things found in my In-Box. I thought I would give it its own post as it considers environmental topics to include poverty, housing, nature, recycling, and business. All of which have an impact on the world we live in today. What is there is how […]

This is relatively old news from almost a year ago. Old news about the media reporting versus reality. Politico carried an interesting article on the direction modern media is taking. The speculation regarding changes of staff and tone at CNN bring to mind the importance of ownership regarding media. There is another story here and […]

April 8, 1865, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson On April 8, 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant was having a hard night.  His army had been harrying Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s for days, and Grant knew it was only a question of time before Lee had to surrender. The people in the Virginia […]